When it comes to providing English learners with an equitable education, some researchers point to the need for more-strategic collaboration between general classroom and content teachers and multilingual specialists.

About 10 percent of all public school students were classified as English learners in 2019. While only 2 percent of all public school teachers teach English as a Second Language as their main assignment, 64 percent of all public school teachers have at least one English learner in their class, according to the latest federal data available, which is from the 2017-18 school year.

At the Sept. 28 to 30 conference of the WIDA consortium—which offers language assessments for English learners in 36 states, several U.S. territories, and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education—tips and tricks were shared on how to best meet the needs of this growing student population, including the call for collaboration among educators.

Andrea Honigsfeld, a professor of teacher education for teachers of English to speakers of other languages, or TESOL, at Molloy University in New York, and Valentina Gonzalez, an educational consultant and author for Seidlitz Education, a consulting group for those working with multilingual learners, presented actionable practices that teachers can use when working with English learners and multilingual specialists in their districts.

The hope is that if all educators in a district view multilingual learners as their students, rather than just the responsibility of specialists or an add-on to their already packed workload, it prevents marginalization of these students and benefits teachers as well.

“When we collaborate with one another, we’re reducing the workload we have,” Gonzalez said.

The co-presenters shared the following five key strategies to bring about effective collaboration.

Collaborative planning

Collaboration starts at planning meetings. Schools should create opportunities for at least a weekly common planning time where grade-level teams at the elementary level, or content-area specialists at the secondary level, can work together with the English language development team or specialists. They would examine the curriculum and plan out how they will scaffold and differentiate instruction for multilingual learners and others who need the extra support, Honigsfeld said.

In an ideal world, she added, administrators would set up two of these weekly planning periods so that one could be a larger group or team meeting to focus on questions such as what are the curricular goals and grade-level standards. The second meeting would dive deeper into students’ individual and group needs.

Questions in these collaborative planning meetings should also consider: what type of academic language and literacy opportunities are embedded in the lesson; how can teachers ensure all students can be successful and participate fully; and how to use scaffolding to ensure students understand the content while being appropriately challenged.

Intentional partnership building

At some point during the school week there may be teachers who are doing exemplary work when it comes to supporting multilingual learners alongside their peers and others who are still learning what strategies work best. This is where educators can intentionally build bridges by, for example, inviting colleagues to visit during certain class periods to either observe or offer feedback, Honigsfeld said.

“Many seasoned teachers might have started out their careers with the notion of ‘my classroom, my kids, I close the door and behind the door it’s my way of reaching these students,’ ” Honigsfeld said. “And with the best of intentions, we’re creating silos or pockets of excellence.”

In cases of resistance to such partnerships or to partnerships with a specialist within the classroom, finding ways to build trust among colleagues is key, Gonzalez said.

“Sometimes just talking less and listening more offers the other partner space to contribute, aiming for parity in the lesson, aiming for parity in the classroom, or in planning, and sharing the spotlight with one another,” she added.

Content and language integration

The ability to incorporate academic language lessons into a multitude of subjects is key for supporting multilingual learners and their peers.

For instance, in math class, teachers can think about typical sentence structures that the students use in a math lesson, such as the comparative forms of “less than” or “greater than.” Within the math lesson, teachers can explore these language forms and other nuances of academic language (such as using “than” rather than “then”) as part of the content area, Honigsfeld said.

Integrating content and language also means coming up with creative opportunities for class participation like a talking activity where students articulate the thinking that goes beyond solving a math problem.

And teachers must remember that “every student, even your highly gifted monolingual, English-speaking student will be an academic language learner,” Honigsfeld added. “It’s not an add on, it is not something that now we’re taking away time from all the other students. Instead, we’re supporting all students in their academic language development.”

Technology integration

Honigsfeld and Gonzalez advocate for teachers to use technology as a tool both for collaborating with fellow colleagues (such as sharing resources on Padlet), and for better engaging all students, and particularly English learners.

Multilingual learners, for instance, can benefit from watching prerecorded lectures they can pause and rewind and then dig deeper into with the teacher in class. This is something that can benefit their monolingual peers as well, Honigsfeld said.

Tools like Flipgrid can also allow students to record themselves, so they respond orally rather than in writing and practice that aspect of language acquisition.

Coaching and consultation

Recognizing that there are school districts that struggle to recruit and retain enough specialists to support their English learners and the heavy workloads teachers already have, coaching and consultation among educators in a school is helpful, Honigsfeld said.

This can look like teachers across class periods sharing materials and strategies to support multilingual learners since they each only get about 15 or 30 minutes to work directly with these students, she added.

It goes back to the importance of all educators thinking of themselves as the teachers of multilingual learners even when that student population isn’t as sizable in their school as other groups. And district and school administrators play their own role by giving teachers the time and resources needed to make all five of these strategies work, Honigsfeld said.

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According to Metro Nashville Public Schools’ open data portal, of Nashville’s roughly 82,600 students, 22,069 — about 27 percent — are active English learners or have transitioned out of the district’s English Learners program within the past four years. These students bring 129 languages to the district and represent 145 countries. The top five most-spoken non-English languages are Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, Somali and Burmese. 

But multilingual students represent much more than numbers and data points. They and their families have a lot to offer to the district. Former English learners include MNPS student board member Abenezer Haile and former student board member Angelie Quimbo. Quimbo was also a co-valedictorian at Hillwood High School — one of the 18 2021-22 valedictorians and salutatorians who, at some point in their education, received services through MNPS’ Office of English Learners. MNPS’ executive director of English Learners Molly Hegwood tells the Scene that many students who exit the EL program outperform their peers whose primary language is English.

Audrey Sika Mvibudulu-Feruzi was an EL student who later became an EL teacher, though she’s since moved out of the district. “Initially, when I went to college, I just wanted to be a general teacher,” Mvibudulu-Feruzi tells the Scene via Zoom. “After two years and a half in, I just told myself, ‘No, let me work with the EL population, that’s where my heart is at, that’s where I came from.’ ” Drawing from needs she had as a student, Mvibudulu-Feruzi created an afterschool program that helped EL students take charge of their education. 

There are many roles within the district that support EL students, from immigrant youth transition specialists to EL teachers, parent outreach translators, student ambassadors and more. There’s also the more targeted Students With Interrupted Formal Education program for those who have large gaps in their education — typically refugees or asylees. The state requires a ratio of one EL teacher for every 35 students. MNPS has only 67 in-person interpreters to serve the thousands of students who are active or accurate English learners — along with their families — but the district also utilizes an over-the-phone interpretation service, which it was able to expand using federal COVID-19 relief money. Those dollars also provided more opportunities for teachers to get EL certifications, but whether those resources will continue at this level when those dollars run out remains to be seen.

As is the case throughout MNPS, EL students could certainly benefit from more staff support. Though the district was not able to provide exact vacancy numbers in time for the publication of this article, Hegwood tells the Scene: “I wouldn’t say our staffing is any better or worse than any of the other areas. It’s very similar in the sense of trends across the district.” Efat Welson is an MNPS interpreter and a translator for the special education department. She tells the Scene she’d still like to see the district hire more interpreters — a request she made directly to the board of education in April.

EL teachers who work with students are not interpreters, and they don’t necessarily speak the languages of the students they serve. “Teacher fluency in the students’ native language is not required for strong English language instruction, but it certainly is a plus,” says former school board member Gini Pupo-Walker, who directs equitable-education advocacy group Education Trust in Tennessee. “That said, hiring bilingual staff at all levels is important and should be a priority for districts.” 

Serving multilingual families means more than providing interpreters and classroom assistance. It takes a spectrum of wraparound services to truly support students — EL and otherwise — but those services aren’t always executed perfectly. While the district has interpretation services, for example, it can be difficult for some families to know how to access them.

“I think there’s a lot of information that’s available — I don’t think there’s enough information that’s accessible,” says Maria Paula Zapata, director of programs at community nonprofit Conexión Américas. “And that point of, ‘How does it become accessible?’ I think is a greater question that we would need to involve families to really get at, like what does that mean?”

Conexión Américas has a Parents as Partners program that allows Spanish-speaking parents to connect with one another and learn about the school district. Zapata describes the program as a “really beautiful peer-to-peer model, where it’s not just a staff member saying, ‘Here’s what you need to do.’ But it’s actual parents saying, ‘Hey, I’ve gone through this program as well. I’ve had children in the school system … and here’s some things that we think can be helpful.’ ”

While programs like these are often helpful, they don’t exist in all languages spoken in the district. 

MNPS leverages outside support through its Community Achieves initiative, which connects students and their families with services that can tend to a range of needs. There’s also a collaborative effort from local organizations, led by Nashville’s teachers’ union, the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, to implement their own community schools model.

Zapata notes that details matter. Bilingual signage and friendly staff can be the difference between a positive experience with the district or a negative one. “The warmth of your front office? It is a really big indicator of whether families feel included in your school,” she says. 

Like many students, English learners could benefit from more support. This can mean donating resources, donating money to organizations that support them, tutoring kids and responding to schools’ specific needs. Also, as Mvibudulu-Feruzi points out, “Just take the time to learn where children are coming from. … I know that when I was younger, when I had an educator … who was interested in my culture or interested in where I came from, or even interested in me having a different accent than the Southern accent … that brightened my day. That made me feel safer at school. [It’s also important to make sure you’re not] looping everyone into one culture because we don’t all have one culture, and even within a culture, there are subcultures.”

“We need to start seeing EL students not for the additional supports that they may need, but how much potential they have to shape and contribute to our community — if we supply them all the things they need to be successful,” says Zapata. “If you want [a] multicultural, multilingual, diverse workforce … you need to invest in them now. Otherwise, we’re losing out on everything that we say we want for the future. And I think that that’s the most important [thing]. We’re not talking about poor little kids who don’t speak English now, we’re talking about the future of a multicultural workforce.”

Regulators have come under fire in accurate years for allowing a decade of technology deals that helped turn major tech platforms into de facto monopolies. While the government has signaled a tougher stance under the Biden administration, so far the deals have continued. Amazon $8.5 billion purchase of film studio MGM closed earlier this year without government interference, suggesting that big tech companies still have permission to bulk up.

Now, Adobe’s $20 billion deal to buy start-up Figma is setting up to be a key test case: Regulators are getting another chance to prove their seriousness about protecting competition.

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SB 1375 takes effect in January 2023.

Obviously, the other major part of this equation is the learners themselves, so what do they think? Seventeen year old Ella Woolley recently passed her test and was full of praise for the EV experience. “I absolutely loved it. The opportunity to learn in an EV was great, and the only thing to get used to was the lack of noise. But what I also noticed was that learning in a larger car [the Peugeot e-2008] gave me added confidence, and I feel like I could drive anything now. For anyone thinking of learning in an automatic, I’d definitely recommend it.”

Incidentally, it’s difficult to establish the number of driving tests taken in an EV because the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency bundles them in with automatic cars, but their figures do show that those are rising while the number of manual tests are falling. 

One last thing we’ve not yet touched on is cost. For learners it’s comparable to a conventional automatic car, so only slightly more expensive than a manual. For instructors, The AA says that a franchise costs from £219 per week, and although higher than for a petrol model (the equivalent Peugeot 208 is £169 per week) taking into account the fuel and recharging costs sees the electric car come out fractionally cheaper overall. 

As for the experience as a whole, the ringing endorsements from instructor and learner alike are clearly good news for the industry as we make the transition to an electrified future.  We’ve certainly come a long way from the noisy old Austin Metro that this writer passed his test in, but for those getting behind the wheel for the first time there certainly seems nothing to fear from going electric.    

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Adibe Emenyonu in Benin-city

The Edo State chapter of the National Association of General Private Nursing Practitioners of Nigeria Nurses (AGPNPN) yesterday in Benin-city, Edo State, vowed to collaborate with other stakeholders in the health sector to fight quackery in the nursing profession.

The group also called for the establishment of a Health Bank like in some other sectors to ease accessibility to healthcare services by Nigerians.

The National President of the association, Balogun Ajiboye, made the call at the opening session of its 12th AGM/Annual Scientific Conference where he also cautioned its members from being part of those training people outside the conventional schools calling them auxiliary nurses.

He said: “Nursing is a profession, and for anybody to practice nursing in Nigeria, he or she must be trained in an institution approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN); he or she must also pass the prescribed examinations and be licenced by the council.

“Quackery in nursing has created a dent in the profession. Quackery activities have sent many Nigerians to their early graves, it is like a cancerous tissue in the body that needs to be cut off immediately I am, therefore, calling on all agencies involved in the eradication of quackery to double their efforts in stamping it out. There must be a collaboration with NMCN and directors of Nursing Services in all the states that are the supervisory authority, they are like governors of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, but I am afraid if they are doing their works as expected.

“The current statistics says that 70 percent of Nigerians access health facilities through the private sector, which means that less than 30 per cent access health through government facilities, and ironically, the government spends all their facilities on these 30 percent yet that is not a pass mark. In view of this, we appeal to governments at all levels to create access to finance for the private practitioners, and we solicit for the establishment of Bank of Health; we have Bank of Industry, and Bank of Agriculture, yet we say health is wealth, but why are they not giving health the priority it deserves?”

On her part, the state Director of Nursing Sciences, Mrs. Patricia Osazuwa, said the state government of Governor Godwin Obaseki is committed to stopping quackery in the nursing profession in the state, and advised members of the association to stop the training of auxiliary nurses using their facilities, a practice he said was encouraging others in the health sector to train unqualified nurses.

Also, the state Chairman of National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), Mrs. Catherine Omonigho Eseine, said there was need for the state government to strengthen the laws that would help for proper prosecution of quacks and those involved in their training.

While declaring open the session, the Chairman of the occasion, Dr. Francis Eremutha, who was represented by the Head of Department, Nursing, Edo State College of Nursing Sciences, Charles Ogbeide, said the use of the ‘title’ auxiliary nurse is to promote quackery in the profession.

The learners of Ekangala Engineering School of Specialisation are obtaining a range of critical skills suitable for the mining sector, thanks to a new curriculum. 

The new school of specialisation is the 21st to be launched by Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, and its curriculum focuses on skills needed in the mining sector.

It is located at Ekangala in Bronkhorstspruit, which is home to several mines, including Petra Diamonds in nearby Cullinan.

School principal Zanele Tjiana says the idea to change the name and curriculum of the former Ekangala Comprehensive High School to Ekangala Engineering School of Specialisation came from the Premier’s Office.

“I supported the idea and highlighted the fact that many people in our community are unemployed because many factories have shut down. The school now focuses on mining because Ekangala is surrounded by mines,” she says. 

The school now offers technical subjects and a dynamic curriculum that teaches welding, fitting and turning, automotive mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, excavation and mining skills.

According to MEC Lesufi, accurate statistics show that 85% of matric learners go to university after matric and become academics. Schools of specialisation will help create more artisans and technically skilled people.

“Learners in such schools will be able to either work immediately at industry-leading companies, or they will embark on entrepreneurship and start their own businesses,” he says.

The school has partnered with Petra Diamonds to arrange field trips for the learners to the mines so that they can explore career opportunities in the industry.

Petra is also sponsoring bursaries for learners from Grade 10 right through to tertiary level. Currently, three youngsters have bursaries to study at the University of Pretoria.

Two of them achieved 100% in mathematics and physical science. A Grade 10 learner is also benefitting from the partnership.

School fees are R800 per year and in exchange, learners receive a quality education.  According to the Department of Basic Education, if parents who, for whatever reason, cannot afford school fees and needs assistance to apply for exemption or lodge an appeal, they may request the school fees committee chairperson or any members of the School Fees Committee to assist him or her in making the application.

The School Fees Committee must respond in writing to the parents on the outcome of their application within 14 days of applying. The school achieved an 80% matric pass rate in 2021 and hopes to increase this to 90% this year.

There are currently 1 061 learners from Grade 8 to Grade 12. One learner, Sihle Sibanyoni (17), who is in Grade 11, enjoys electronics, technical mathematics and technical sciences subjects.

“I want to become an electrical engineer and ‘the next big thing’ in the mining industry,” she says.

To be admitted to the school, applicants who have passed Grade 7 must pass an aptitude test with an average of 60% in mathematics, English and natural science.

-This article was originally published in the GCIS Vuk'uzenzele.